Spears of Redriver

Part Twenty-Five - The Catacombs

The shadows in the dark shaft danced with the glow of each lit torch as the party of ten spears marched along. Every man had a spear in hand, a shield on his back, and a torch raised overhead as they stepped lightly through the muck of the catacomb floor. Desen the Rogue led the way a few feet ahead of Carthus, who walked side by side with Oro. The rest were all human, except the one bregiri warrior at the tail end of the group. The dwarf had found a hidden catacomb entrance that the Ordethi were using to travel through the city unseen.

Carthus was glad to finally be out of the Stone Citadel and on the trail of the assassins, although he did not forget the men that tried to kill him. That was Ythara's task since the men posed as Coren Swords and the bregiri knew the mercenaries well from his time in their ranks. The young Maad knew that he had to focus on his mission, so he tried his best to clear his mind.

Desen stopped suddenly and raised a hand as if to halt the armed party. Carthus was the only one who approached him.

"What is it?" the Master Commander of the Spears of Redriver asked at a whisper.

"This is the entrance to their hideout" Desen replied. He pointed at a spot along the left wall where two columns held up the ceiling. It didn't look like much to Carthus; the columns were the same as the many others they had already passed. But Desen stepped forward and pushed a slightly protruding stone deeper into the wall. Nothing happened.

"What is this?" Carthus asked. Before the rogue could reply, the wall shifted backward as dust was spat out at them from within the openings. He stepped back and held in a cough, afraid to raise any alarms if the Ordethi were still inside or had come back for some reason. The wall shifted sideways with a grinding after a momentary pause.

"Weapons out at this point" Desen suggested and drew the bronze shortsword from his belt with a smile. He seemed glad when Carthus returned it to him, along with payment for finding the lair, and a sighed contract to work for the Spears of Redriver.

"Weapons out, torches down, except you" Carthus commanded to the men behind him, singling one out to keep his light. He waited as the Spears dropped their torches to the stonework of the floor, and then turned to Desen with a nod.

"Aye then" the rogue nodded back and stepped through the opening of the secret doorway. Carthus followed just at his heels, with Oro next in line and the others behind him. It was a narrow passage, where only one could fit at a time. Desen and Oro both turned sideways as their broad shoulders wouldn't allow them to continue. Only one of them kept a torch, the light of which bounced from the walls and the low ceiling, providing just enough light to see ahead, not that the dwarf or the bregir needed it.

Desen led the way below, and the narrow tunnel eventually widened with a little descent. A few more minutes and they exited the passage into a large opening, where the torchlight failed to pierce the darkness past ten feet away. Carthus glared into the shadows before them, unable to see or hear anything.

"They are not here" the young Maad sighed. He had hoped that the Ordethi had returned.

"Disappointed huh?" Desen asked, "I did say it was empty...we will find them."

"It will be easier to sort through this place and look for clues with more than one set of eyes," Oro said.

"You're right, let's get some of those torches down here" Carthus announced. Two men followed the bregiri back into the dark hole that was the tunnel. They quickly disappeared and made no sound.

"Carthus, look at this...this is where Desen found the maps" Oro took the single torch from the Spear and walked across the length of the room. Now, the far wall came into view, and Carthus realized it wasn't as big as it felt. There were a few tables against the wall across from him, and a row of crates was stacked neatly in the corner.

"What's in those?" Carthus asked, pointing at the crates.

"I pried one open when I was here before, and it was full of grain...but there were vials hidden inside the grain" Desen replied.

"Vials?" Carthus asked.

"Aye, vials...all empty" Desen nodded. Carthus crossed the room to examine the tables with Oro. There were strange sets of glasswork and bottles and tubes and clay trays spread over the table tops. None of it made sense to the young commander.

"Looks like they were doing alchemy...mixing herbs and tinctures," Desen said.

"These don't look used" one of the Spears approached them. He picked up one of the strangely shaped bottles and glared at it in the torchlight. Carthus looked at it now too. It was a clear glass bottle with a strong touch of blue, a broad bottom, and a long thin neck that curved to the side before opening. It was as the Spear said, the glass was clean without a single sign of dirt or use.

"My father deals with potions, he's an alchemist...I've seen these bottles before," the Spear said, lowering the pitcher back to the table, "they are used to heat and mix different liquids, they are new."

"Which means the Ordethi brought them here to use them for something...and still have not" Oro added.

"Aye, this is a new lair they are just setting up?" Desed asked.

"They must be trying to make some kind of potions or poisons here, in large quantities," the Spear said.

"So they will be back?" Carthus asked as the bregiri, and the two Spears, returned from the darkened tunnel with a torch in each hand. They spread the firebrands around, and all faced Carthus for a moment.

"They will be back," Carthus said, "leave everything as it is, we can wait, set a trap for them."

"But how did they get the crates down here?" Desen suddenly asked.

"What do you mean?" Carthus turned back, and the dwarf was standing by them.

"These crates are almost as broad as I am...they wouldn't have fit through the tunnel there," Desen said.

"He's right; there must be another way in there" Oro agreed.

"How did you find the first stone used to open the secret passage above?" Carthus asked the dwarf.

"Well, there was a marking on the column beside it, easy to miss if you can't see in the dark" Desen answered.

"Search the walls for markings, or a breeze, or anything" Carthus commanded, and the Spears spread out.

"What if we find something we may not want to?" Desen asked.

"We need to find them" Carthus replied sternly.

"What if they are waiting for us? What if it is an ambush or a trap?" the rogue asked.

"What do you suggest?" Oro stepped in.

"We are pretty close to the southeastern wall and the gatehouse, let me go get another detachment of Spears so that we can search above us...these tunnels have to come out into the city! And we can flank whoever may still be down here." Desen sounded excited for a moment and had a gleam in his eyes that Carthus wasn't used to.

"Master Carthus! Desen" the bregiri Spear called out suddenly.

They two of them stepped across the room to him, and he pointed at three strange glyphs scratched into the stone near the corner opposite the crates.

"That's their markings alright!" Desen grinned.

"Good job!" Carthus said, "Desen, find a way to open it, and you can go get a detachment of Spears!"

"Well that much is easy," Desen pushed through and started patting what seemed like random stones until one eventually shifted under his strength. The wall rumbled and slid backward and then sideways just like the one above did. Before them was a hallway that seemed to have been carved through the rocky terrain beneath the city, it was not clean cut or reinforced with stone walls or columns like the rest of the catacombs. The darkness beyond devoured their torchlight as a cool, dry breeze tried to put out the fires.